The Emerald Rose

    Well let me see. Been screwing up my body working for the local “Super Home Improvement Store” chain, (but I’ll cover that in a minute, be patient.), having a serious reduction in “Pub time”, diet is gone to hell, but I’m still battling to stay trim, gym schedule and workouts are few and far between, and generally I have reached the conclusion , as my mentor the great Xenon, sims (with the little “s”), “…earthlings are a strange and under utilized life form, strictly because of their personal “traits”.

       All that being said I went for a Cardiac nuclear stress test. (Actually quite proud of that one. The two years of kickin’ my ass at the gym are paying off,…BUT…) Anyhow met the new Cardiologist a couple of nights before the test in the Emergency Room where I volunteer and introduced myself, nice guy, good creds, what the hell. So I show up for the “Billing Two Step” a unique dance where you go to the hospital on one day, they shoot you up with the little radioactive isotope, tell you relax and just lay down for ten minutes and this huge camera “thingy” rotates around your chest taking pictures of your heart, THEN they send you home. The next day you come back, they shoot you up AGAIN with the radioactive isotopes, they put you on the treadmill, wire you up and crank your heart up, run the little EKG (squiggle line machine, reminds me of a cardiac lie detector), then you go lay down again for another ten minutes and they tell you just relax and the honkin’ camera monster rotates and takes more pixs. QUESTION: why can’t you do the first part, the “resting EKG when you come in, THEN just go run your ass off on the treadmill and let them take some more pixs later? Why do you have to do it two days in a row for a procedure that could be simply combined and done in one day? ANSWER: So the hospital, the Doc’s, all the nurses and every other person and thing “billable” can be done TWICE. Medical Insurance Company, Government, they don’t care. And we wonder why the cost of health care is ridiculous?

       Anyway passed the stress test, treadmill thing with flying colors, actually my heart muscle is stronger than the average heart muscle according to the numbers and comments of the Doc,(guess the walking 1200 miles last year helped), BUT…. I was supposed to have an appointment with the Cardiologist two weeks after and he calls the very next day and want’s to move it up for the day after that. (That my friends is an “Oh shit! Here we go again.”)

       Not as bad as my fertile “suspense thriller mind” was rambling on about for the next 36 hours as I counted the pock marks on the ceiling, counted the number of times the bedroom fan turns on low per hour, and otherwise, “fretted” about. In the end he tells me it seems like one of the “bypasses” of my three might be a little plugged so he wants to do another heart catheterization, (roto rooter from the groin up following the Michelin Guide for Arteries and Internal Superhighways). I of course being a distant relative of the chicken pose the  query about the potential for another “slice and dice” with a skill saw on my chest. He chuckles and says NO. This particular problem can be solved with either a “stent” or medication, depending, but he wants to be sure before he decides which way to go, in fact he may just do the stent while he’s in there doing the “road trip to my heart”. So today is Saturday and he’s doing it all on Thursday, the 17th.

 (Let’s get it done before I have to spend money re-filling a prescription or two that will need to be changed or eliminated as the local good will stores will not take “old pills” and give you a tax write-off, and so far there is no “Flea Market” or “Yard Sale” I am aware of where I can sell them to someone for 50% off without getting a fully paid 5-10 year vacation with a small room three meals a day and stylish orange jump suits. Let you know on that later.) The whole process is an “in at 6am, home after lunch” thing. Thursday is a good day because Dr.s take Wednesday off, play golf, relax, catch up on sleep, etc. Sort of like car manufacturers, but remember never get any surgery done on Mondays or Fridays! (“Looking forward to the weekend” shortcuts on Friday and “Damn I’m so exhausted from partying all weekend”Monday)

     Now why am I more concerned with the “part-time” job at the “Super Home Improvement Store”? First of all while the corporate “vision”, “guidelines”, “policies” , “directives” etc are noble and good, when you put them in the hands of “kids” AND in particular motivate them with HUGE CASH BONUSES, and “fast track careers” to the Nirvana of management (Monday thru Friday, 9am to 4pm, two hour lunch with martinis, “intense management development seminars” in Tahiti, the Virgin Islands, etc. at the $400 a day Hotel/Spa/Golf Heaven),….well compare that to 6am to 9pm six and a half days a week with the odds on a full two day real regular weekend off being slightly larger than hitting the World’s largest lotteries back to back five days in a row,….well you probably sense the “motivation” of the “Young Turks”.

          So no regular schedules (it makes the natives complacent) stress the need to take two breaks and a full hour for “lunch” because they care,…then staff the joint so it is like a run-a-way rollercoaster and see what happens. Motivate every single employee , bar none through intimidation of being “written up” and insure ALL, like EVERY infraction of anything, is punishable by  “up to and including termination”. This is how gerbils and blind mice are trained,….but it works better and better each year as people think for themselves less and less. Oh yeah and rule number two NEVER, NEVER, NEVER bring up an error you see to a “native” committing it, always seek out the native’s supervisor,(or more preferably two levels of supervision higher), and make sure they understand that the native’s infraction most assuredly reflects on all  the inbetween supervisors, hence may cause “up to and including termination” to be at hand for any/all the supervisors. (Screw the native, he ain’t gonna listen, so always piss on someone who has more to lose, whose vocabulary includes “Yes, oh wise and supreme leader, I will cause remediation and adherance forth with. )

        Because there are long periods of what are called “super hours”, where no work is allowed and all hands must spend all their time standing around, saying hi to customers walking by, and otherwise “smile and simply be there” to promote the “Customer is Number One” image,.. well,… you can go batty. So I had a stroke of genius and had recently found out that my “Jawbone” bluetooth earpiece could be programmed to play music from a streaming site I love called “Pandora” which I’ve been using for a couple of years and since it is an “interactive site” you can essentially “tailor” the music the way you want it and after about five or six months the music is exactly the type,style, and artists you enjoy, so I had it in my ear and the store manager walks by and says “You have something in your ear”, to which I reply “Yeah, my bluetooth device”,….and so he moves on. Well about an hour later the manager of all six of the departments of which I am in one of them scurries over ands points to his ear and says, “You gotta get rid of that thing.” Ergo the proof of the adage that “Shit rolls downhill”, but upper management’s job is to roll it up the hill as high as they can before they let it start rolling down. The higher you can roll it up well the better a manager you will appear to be.  Get more folks involved, more fear can be developed over larger and wider masses of people.

        Besides with a 32 hour schedule one week, 10 hours the next, all eight hour shifts no two regular “shifts” from week to week, etc, my “routine” is totally disrupted. When that sort of thing happens you stop eating right, you hit a “grab ‘n go” high cholesterol, fat, salt and everything other than nutritious meal, you stop regular exercising, and overall you simply “live to work”. Guess I gotta put a stop to this. My goal was to be able to make a couple extra mortgage payments in case anything happens and I had to miss a couple in this “raging” economy.

      So much for todays rant, guess us “old farts” like things regular and routine.

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